Virginity obsession is focus of new documentary

When Therese Shechter set out to film a documentary about female sexuality, she wanted to focus on slut-shaming. But as she interviewed more sources she realized that shame is a double-edged sword and shifted the theme to the society’s obsession with virginity.

“How to Lose Your Virginity,” the just-released film by Women Make Movies, is about the virgin-whore dichotomy, how virginity is a vague concept based on perceptions and myths primarily about women and how women are judged no matter what sexual choices they make. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

But the tone is light here, not bitter.

“My favorite part of this film is that it is upbeat from start to finish,” writes Leigh Kolb for Bitch Flicks. “There’s no anger, there’s no judgment. I don’t want to riff on the ‘angry feminist’ stereotype, but I know I tend to get pretty worked up and, well, angry when I talk about our culture’s toxic obsession with female sexuality and expectations of virginity.”

Virginity, Shechter shows, is something almost everyone thinks about, but no one understands.

The film, years in the making, spawned an interactive component, a collection of stories about virginity from around the world called the “V-Card Diaries,” named after the re-usable punch cards Shechter and her team give at events and online. Early V-Card submissions were featured over the summer at the Kinsey Institute’s 8th Annual Juried Art Exhibition as its first-ever interactive exhibit.

Gathering stories from people beyond the film’s sources has turned the project into more than just a narrative about virginity. It’s now about the connection of storytelling and how hearing about other people’s experience can make anyone else feel less alone in theirs.

“People love this subversive way to push back against the one-time life-changing construct of virginity loss,” Shechter tells Vitamin W about her punch cards. “But what sets this project apart, she adds, are the many stories by people who haven’t yet become sexual, or reject the concept of virginity loss altogether.”